Interview: Steve Wozniak on new iPhones, smart watches, Google Glass, and more

Smartwatches could be winners, but need appropriately sized displays.

Ahead of his conversation on stage at Apps World with Wired.co.uk's editor Nate Lanxon, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke to us about his view on new iPhones, wearable technologies, the future of apps, and Google Glass.

Steve Wozniak

"These young people with new ideas starting out—sometimes for the first time—are my favorite people in the world," Steve Wozniak tells Wired.co.uk. "It reminds me of when we started Apple."

Since doing so in the 1970s with Steve Jobs, Wozniak has turned much of his attention, time, and money to education and new businesses. Presently serving as chief scientist at flash storage company Fusion-io, he also readily invests in new technologies and applications. "The best things that capture your imagination are ones you hadn't thought of before, and that aren't talked about in the news all the time," says Wozniak.

High on the list of ideal candidates are apps that take a smarter approach to the use of human speech, ones "where you talk to it like a normal person, the way you would talk to a human being."

"I want to be able to speak with errors in my wording, errors in my grammar," he continues. "When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know 'no, he couldn't have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.' That's going to take a lot of software, a lot of artificial intelligence work over the next five to 10 years."

Another technology being predicted to develop over that period is the smart watch. One research group has suggested shipments of smart watches in 2014 could hit 8.9 million globally, hitting 214 million units by 2018. But Wozniak has already identified that the current models are too restrictive.

"I want the entire smartphone, the entire Internet, on my wrist," he says. "I want a larger display than they're starting with. They're starting with [...] displays that are the size of the iPod nano, which is the size of an ordinary watch of the past. I think we've got to get a little beyond this watch of the past.

"I hope [a future smart watch is] independent, works on its own, and is not connected with Bluetooth to the smartphone in your pocket," he adds. "But that doesn't mean it would be bad if it were that way."

Another notable product that will no doubt see considerable development over the next five years is Google Glass, and Wozniak's view on the system is pretty cut and dry. "I think that has a chance too, and the reason is: I want one. I don't have one because I haven't enough time to be an early tester.

"I think that's where our biggest innovations come from. It's people looking back at themselves and saying, 'Here's something that I really want that doesn't exist. I'm going to make it, maybe just for myself and my company.'"

With a pair of new iPhones just launched from Apple, it's difficult not to ask Wozniak his view on the new models. "I haven't seen [the 5C] too much because it wasn't very attractive to me," he explains. "You know what, a lot of Apple products, you've got to hold it in your hand and you get a whole different view of it. I've only just seen pictures online. So I'm not a good judge, but nothing grabbed my attention like a lot of Apple products.

"I'm usually interested in the more high-end anyway, and I love the looks [of] the iPhone 4 and the 5; I just love the looks and the beauty of the product. So the 5S is more like that. All it means is, 'Oh gosh, now I've got to get three new phones to get the three 5S colors.'

"So I'm not turned on by the 5C, but hey, maybe that's where a huge market is and I'm just not the person."

Steve Wozniak will be appearing at Apps World on October 23, speaking on stage with Wired.co.uk's editor Nate Lanxon. It's free to attend. To find out more and to book to attend, consult the Apps World website.

I had not thought of it, but now that the Woz mentions it, I totally do need to get all 3 5s phones so I can color match with my outfits. Perhaps even a 4th one that I put a case on for when I know I am going to be roughing it.

"When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know 'no, he couldn't have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.'"

Eww. That's exactly what I *wouldn't* want. That behavior has made Google and other search engines almost useless. I miss the days when search engines ANDed everything by default and didn't think they knew better than you and start "correcting" you.

"When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know 'no, he couldn't have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.'"

Eww. That's exactly what I *wouldn't* want. That behavior has made Google and other search engines almost useless. I miss the days when search engines ANDed everything by default and didn't think they knew better than you and start "correcting" you.

I think the auto correct he is referring to is when you misspell something, not when you don't AND everything by default (which IIRC it still does anyhow).

The biggest takeaway here is linguistic comprehension for autocorrect. The system needs to be able to parse sentence in real time and know that I didn't mean we'll, I mean well, and I didn't mean he'll, I meant hell.

Making that work for every language? Now you've got your work cut out for you.

You know what, a lot of Apple products, you've got to hold it in your hand and you get a whole different view of it. I've only just seen pictures online. So I'm not a good judge...

Wouldn't it be nice if much of the Ars user-population and internet at-large followed a similar train of thought about products in general?

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Yep. For example, I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

I had not thought of it, but now that the Woz mentions it, I totally do need to get all 3 5s phones so I can color match with my outfits. Perhaps even a 4th one that I put a case on for when I know I am going to be roughing it.

If you want to be like Woz, not only do you need all of the top-of-the-line iPhone colors, you also need a nice selection of high end Android phones. Of course, you have to have phones for all the major carriers too, because you never know who's going to have the best signal in whatever random area you happen to be in at the moment.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

Maybe smartwatches can take more of a wrist gauntlet form factor to get a widescreen, landscape display on there.

it'd be cool but only geeks would buy it. it'd be too big. what's needed is a flexible display that wraps around most of the wrist strap. allow the display to rotate along the strap. this keeps the display both large and unobtrusive, and you can tuck it under a sleeve. to see more just spin it around.

Not quite. Few, if any, apps take advantage of the extra cores (heck, many don't seem to take much advantage of dual cores) and the the extra power on the larger battery is more than likely eaten up by the increased screen size...

Disclosure: I'm an Android person, though I only have low-end tablet & phone and dislike Apple for various reasons it'd be too far off-topic to go into here (Woz is cool, though).

Maybe smartwatches can take more of a wrist gauntlet form factor to get a widescreen, landscape display on there.

it'd be cool but only geeks would buy it. it'd be too big. what's needed is a flexible display that wraps around most of the wrist strap. allow the display to rotate along the strap. this keeps the display both large and unobtrusive, and you can tuck it under a sleeve. to see more just spin it around.

No, it would also be a great form factor for business use. But you can already get a gauntlet tablet case...

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

Not quite. Few, if any, apps take advantage of the extra cores (heck, many don't seem to take much advantage of dual cores) and the the extra power on the larger battery is more than likely eaten up by the increased screen size...

Disclosure: I'm an Android person, though I only have low-end tablet & phone and dislike Apple for various reasons it'd be too far off-topic to go into here (Woz is cool, though).

On android you generally do not do anything special to take advantage of multiple cores, and it will be using them if you write an app according to the normal best practices published by google.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

I agree with Woz about the need for major improvement in voice control/speech recognition. After upgrading to iOS 7, one of the first things I tried (I was hopeful but not expecting) to get Siri to perform two commands in sequence. For instance, 'turn on bluetooth, then open Hulu Plus. Seems simple enough, but so far.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

If you want to be like Woz, not only do you need all of the top-of-the-line iPhone colors, you also need a nice selection of high end Android phones. Of course, you have to have phones for all the major carriers too, because you never know who's going to have the best signal in whatever random area you happen to be in at the moment.

Apparently not a good enough selection. Woz had to borrow my mom's Verizon phone to make a call in Yellowstone. The only reason she recognized him was because of Dancing With the Stars. *sigh*

The biggest takeaway here is linguistic comprehension for autocorrect. The system needs to be able to parse sentence in real time and know that I didn't mean we'll, I mean well, and I didn't mean he'll, I meant hell.

Making that work for every language? Now you've got your work cut out for you.

I suppose we do need some of those 'iPhone predictive text gone wrong' sites for voice instead, text is getting old...

Maybe smartwatches can take more of a wrist gauntlet form factor to get a widescreen, landscape display on there.

I think doing anything that takes more than 5 seconds on something like that would get awkward/difficult. Still going to be easier to just pull your phone out of your pocket than stuff around rolling up sleeves, taking the thing off if two hands are needed etc.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

If you want to be like Woz, not only do you need all of the top-of-the-line iPhone colors, you also need a nice selection of high end Android phones. Of course, you have to have phones for all the major carriers too, because you never know who's going to have the best signal in whatever random area you happen to be in at the moment.

Apparently not a good enough selection. Woz had to borrow my mom's Verizon phone to make a call in Yellowstone. The only reason she recognized him was because of Dancing With the Stars. *sigh*

Perhaps it wasn't lack of a phone that made him want to talk to your mom.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

In the next 5 years the internet will finally realize that everyone carries differing fundamental assumptions with them and thus there are non-overlapping areas between any individual's reality. We will realize that anger and confusion are just the reconciliation of different realities coming into contact with each other.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

On android you generally do not do anything special to take advantage of multiple cores, and it will be using them if you write an app according to the normal best practices published by google.

Any app with significant workload still needs to be written with concurrency in mind, or its 'advantage of multiple cores' will be miniscule. No system does much parallelization for you. (count down the seconds until someone proves me wrong)

Few programs (whether PC or smartphone) are written well in this manner, even games.

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

You know what, a lot of Apple products, you've got to hold it in your hand and you get a whole different view of it. I've only just seen pictures online. So I'm not a good judge...

Wouldn't it be nice if much of the Ars user-population and internet at-large followed a similar train of thought about products in general?

Yep. For example, I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!

I didn't have any opinions on the Galaxy S4 for a long time, and only after using one for an entire week did I reach the conclusion that it is a terrible phone and far, far inferior to the iPhone in terms of user experience!